Living Faith

Matthew 21:23-32
“Sing me a song about Jesus.  But please don’t sing about the poor.  I’ve already had a long day.  I don’t want to hear anymore.  Sing me a song about Jesus that will make me feel happy inside.  Sing me a song about forgiveness that will make this lifestyle feel justified.  Sing me a song about Jesus.” 

 I almost had to pull my car over when I heard this song for the first time.  It is by peacemaker and activist David LaMotte, someone quite familiar to many of us, especially John and Olivia, his parents.  But ten years ago, even though I knew of David, I was unfamiliar with this particular song.  I had just purchased the CD and I popped it in my car as I took off on the three hour drive from my home north of Houston to my parent’s home in Waco.   I remember feeling very tired on that day.  It had been a long week of church work.  I was ready to escape for a while.  But then, this song began to play and I could not help but pay close attention to its words.  And as I did, I felt like falling to my knees right there in my car.  His words convicted me. 

 “Sing me a song about Jesus.  But please don’t sing about the poor.  I’ve already had a long day.  I don’t want to hear anymore. Sing me a song about Jesus that will make me feel happy inside.  Sing me a song about forgiveness that will make this lifestyle feel justified.” 

 At that moment, I deeply understood David’s lamentation.  I wanted to follow Jesus.  I wanted to live out my faith in action.  But not right then.  I was busy.  I was tired.  I would work with the poor and outcast another day.  I would evangelize later.  I would take up my cross after I had a good nap. 

 David’s words convicted me back then and I must confess that they often still do today.  Perhaps you can identify.  We want to follow Jesus.  We want to live out our faith in action and we will… but we just have some long days.  We get busy.  We get tired.  We will take up our crosses for the least of these, right after a good nap.  So for now, why don’t we just preach about the Jesus who held little children and spoke of easy burdens.  We will look to doing our peacemaking, our friend-being, our mercy-granting, our justice-seeking work of discipleship in a little while… So Jesus, if you would, just give us a break for a bit.

 That might have been some of what the Pharisees and the other religious leaders were feeling that day in the temple after listening to Jesus.  He had just arrived in Jerusalem but he had already turned over the tables of the money changers in the temple and challenged tradition.  From their vantage point, Jesus was doing nothing but stirring up trouble with his teaching and his new demands.  And his behavior made the religious leaders angry.  “Who do you think you are?” they asked him.  “Who gave you the authority to come in here and tell us these new things about God and what faithful living looks like?  Where did your M.Div. degree come from Jesus; what Presbytery ordained you?  By what authority do you do these things?”   

 Jesus responded by asking a question of his own.  He asked them about John the Baptist’s authority.  Where did he get his authority? Jesus asked.  It was a kind of trick question.  For Jesus knew full well that if the religious leaders said “from God,” then they would clearly reveal to everyone that they had been ignoring God’s will by not following Jesus, as John had preached.  But if the leaders said that John got the authority merely from humans, then the crowd would turn on them because the crowd believed John was a prophet.  There was no easy answer for those leaders.  Realizing their dilemma, they chose to take the easy way out.  They shrugged their shoulders and pleaded ignorance.

 But Jesus wasn’t going to let them off the hook that easily.  He was not going to simply sing them a little song to make them happy and satisfied.  He wanted to teach them, to unveil something new for them.  He wanted to help them see things differently for themselves, so they might act differently in response.  So Jesus did what he normally did—he told them a story, a parable. 

 As you heard, the story goes that a father approaches his two sons and asks if they will go and work in the vineyard for him.  The first son immediately says “no,” but then later has a change of heart, a moment of repentance perhaps, and goes to work.  The second son, wanting very much to please his father, says “I will go Lord.”  But then, he never gets around to it.  Maybe the day just got away from him.  Maybe he was consumed with other work.  But the reality is that he did not practice what he preached. And that is how the story ends.  But that was not the end of Jesus’ teaching moment. 

 “Who,” Jesus asked the religious leaders—the ministers, elders and deacons, “did the will of the father?”  Well my goodness, the leaders must have thought, this does not take much brainpower.  Obviously, the first son did the will of the Father.  Yes, he was wrong in the beginning, but he realized it and changed.  The second son said all the right things but did nothing.  He stayed the same.  Right beliefs but no action. “The first one,” they responded.

 After hearing their response, Jesus seized the moment.  In his own way, he told the religious leaders they just convicted themselves.  They were being the second son.  They said all the right things.  They believed all the essential tenets.  They passed all their ordination exams.  But yet, even while they were saying yes to God, they were acting NO to Jesus.[i]  They had signed up to work but they had not actually shown up for work. 

 And Jesus was not done.  “And by the way, those racketeers and prostitutes, all those you toss out, will get into the kingdom ahead of you” (notice it is not instead, but ahead).  “They may have said no to me at first, but they have changed.  Now they put their actions where their faith is.  They sign up and show up.”  As Susan Jones writes, it is no small wonder that Friday of that same week the religious leaders took counsel against Jesus to put him to death[ii].  He was leveling a pretty serious charge against them.  He was accusing them of substituting their beliefs about God for their obedience to God.  Simply put, they were not practicing what they preached.

 But Jesus’ charges go beyond mere hypocrisy.  He pointed out that the religious leaders did not even realize that was what they were doing.  They had talked the talk of faith for so long that they didn’t even notice that they had stopped walking the walk.  And I do not know about you, but Jesus’ charge can get me too.  It is why David’s song hooked me so deeply ten years ago.  It was not that I was consciously professing faith in Jesus while actively refusing to live out my beliefs.  Rather, ten years ago as a new pastor and an almost new mother, my decision to slowly substitute belief for obedience was completely unconscious. 

I had talked the talk of faith so long—all through seminary, all through internships, all through chaplaincy, all through my first year in ministry—I had become so articulate in saying what I believed that I started to assume I was living out my beliefs too.   It was not until I heard my life laid out bare in that folk song did I realize what was going on with me:  “Sing me a song about Jesus but please don’t sing about the poor.  I’ve already had a long day.  I don’t want to hear anymore.” 

 In my car, somewhere between Houston and Waco, I realized that I had been wanting to hear all about Jesus, as long as I was not required to change anything.  I would believe the right way.  I would say the right things.  But please don’t require me to live differently, to ask hard questions, to look at my checkbook or my calendar and get real honest about what my priorities actually were.  It’s been too long of a day for that kind of serious discipleship.  If I had not been driving down the highway, I would have been on my knees.  And frankly, it is a struggle I still have sometimes, though over the years I have realized I am not the only one.  Perhaps from time to time you stand in that space with me.

 In our Reformed theological tradition, we have a word for that discrepancy between what we say we believe and what we actually do.  It is called sin.  As Barbara Brown Taylor preaches, sin is inevitable and forgivable, but should not be tolerable for those who love God.[iii]   The great theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote “Jesus wants followers, not admirers.”  The world is full of people who will say, believe, and stand for all the right things.  But what God needs is people who will go where God calls them and do what God tells them to do[iv].  God needs people who will put their feet to faith, who will talk the talk and walk the walk, who will sign up and show up for God’s work of peace-making, friend-being, mercy-granting, and justice-seeking in all aspects of life, not just on Sundays. 

 Pretty soon, your Finance committee, your Stewardship committee, and your Session will try to reflect that kind of commitment through our budgeting process.  For we all know that a church’s budget communicates far more than just what it costs to run a church.  It reflects our priorities.  We spend money on what is important to us.  We do that in our own lives and we do it as a church.  As a Session, we will try to make sure that our budget reflects who we feel God is calling us to be as a church.  We will try to make sure that we are putting our feet to our faith. 

 For example, our number one goal as a congregation is that we will be a people who are Centered in God’s Story.  So your Session will have to look at how much money we are giving to worship ministries and to Christian Education.  Does the allotment reflect that priority, that goal, that dream that we have as a church? 

 Our number two goal is to be a people who are Living God’s Grace into the World.  So we will have to look at how we are going to reflect that through our budget.  Will we be willing to commit to pay an Associate Pastor for whom part of the job will be to help us live out our mission and outreach?  Will we try and keep our mission giving to at least 12% of our budget?  I could continue but I imagine you get my point.  As we put together a budget, your Session will be trying to put actions to our beliefs.  We will be trying to put feet to our faith.  And we will do that hoping that you are doing that as you think about your pledge for 2012.  We hope your pledge, your financial giving to Christ’s ministries through this church, will be putting feet to your faith, as well.

 For in this parable, it appears that Jesus is more interested in how we act than what we say.  He looks to see if our feet are moving as much as our mouths.  For he knows that if we get the courage to follow him with all our heart, mind, and soul, than our lives will look and feel differently.  Our relationships will be different.  Perhaps they will be more honest, more loving, more committed.  Our calendars will reflect a difference.  Perhaps they will be more balanced between work and home, between ourselves and others.  Our checkbooks will be different. We will spend money on what is necessary and what is important for faith and life.  Our feet will move as much as our mouths. 

 Why?  Not because we are scared that if we don’t, we won’t make it past the pearly gates.  Remember, Jesus said the prostitutes and tax collectors were going in ahead, not instead.  Rather, we will act differently because we are grateful.  We will act differently because our faith has changed us and we simply cannot go back to the way we were.  Something inside us won’t let us go that easily.  We will no longer be able to sign up for God’s work without showing up for God’s work. 

 For once we get a taste of living out our salvation, living out our baptisms, we won’t be able to get enough of it.  It will take hold of us.[v]  Day by day, we will be changed and we will no longer be satisfied by substituting our beliefs for our obedience.  It just won’t fill us up anymore.  The fancy theological word for that, by the way, is called sanctification, being made holy. 

 Now, don’t get me wrong:  we will all continue to have days when we look in the mirror and realize our mouths are moving a mile a minute, but our feet are firmly planted still.  We will all continue to have moments where after a long day, we only want to hear happy songs about Jesus, rather than the tough talk of discipleship.  This church will continue to wrestle with who we are called to be in this community and how we, as BMPC, put our feet to our faith.  And on some days, we will do it well. And on some days, we will miss the mark.  Sin is inevitable, but it is forgivable. 

 And like the tax collectors, the prostitutes, and the religious leaders, we will be called to repent again and again, to keep on turning from our brokenness to God’s claim on us.  But what we want to help one another do is keep our inevitable and forgivable sin from becoming tolerable.  We want to help each other from getting too comfortable with signing up but not showing up.  So may our prayer be that together, when we look in the mirror, our mouths and our feet move in sync.[vi]  And that we keep heading in the right direction.  Remember—God does not ask “are you there yet?”  God asks “Are you headed in the right direction—the direction of grace, the direction of justice, the direction of mercy, the direction of God.”  May we head into that direction, together.  Amen.